Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Today didn't go well. I took my phone to the Apple store to get the battery replaced. The person I talked to at the Genius Bar was nice enough and told me that they'd have my phone fixed in a hour. That seemed fair enough, so I used the hour to drive up to my watchmaker and pick up my watch. Neither of us could remember how to set the old Tissot T-Touch, so I took the watch and told the watchmaker that I'd look up the instructions on Google. Unfortunately, I left some of the packaging for the watch up at the watchmaker's studio, so I'll have to make a second trip up there to retrieve it, assuming that it hasn't been thrown away already.

When I returned to the Apple store, they powered up my phone and showed me that it still worked. I was good to go. Unfortunately, I should have tried the Home Button on the bottom of the phone before I left the store. When I got home, I discovered that this all important button doesn't work anymore. Without the Home Button, the phone is fairly worthless. I looked up "non-functional iPhone Home Button" on Google and discovered that this button is frequently rendered inoperable when technicians try to pry out the battery. Located near the battery are several very small chips and jumpers that control the operation of the home button and power switch. If these components are broken or sheared off while changing the battery, you will need an entirely new logic board. Now I've got to go back to the Apple store and convince them to give me a new phone. Given the miniscule size of the components that are probably broken, it is doubtful that something like this can be fixed. I should have just kept the old battery. The phone was working fine, but lure of a free new battery was just too strong.

Dot's incontinence seems worse on odd numbered days. There is no rhyme or reason to this, but she seems to alternate between good and bad days. This makes no sense to me. Dot eats and drinks the same things every day. She should be getting progressively better in some sort of measurable way, but so far, the progress she's making seems pretty random. At some point we're going to have to decide whether to put Dot on medication. She doesn't even realize she is peeing in her sleep, but we certainly do.

I dread going back to the Apple store tomorrow. I had to wait a long time today, and it will probably be the same tomorrow. Why didn't they notice this problem before they handed the phone back to me? It's always something, isn't it. On my way out of the shopping mall I stopped at the new Tesla store that just opened. You can't buy a car there, but you can look at one. It was the first time I'd actually seen a Tesla in person. What a cool car. There's one small problem though. The thing runs on 8000 small Lithium Ion batteries. Just imagine when those things start going bad. A Tesla with faulty batteries will make my iPhone problems seem like nothing.

1 comment:

My ongoing problems with my digestive system that went haywire in May and were smacked with hefty antibiotics are getting better at a pace similar to Dots. I have a good day then two bad days, then a couple of good days, then a bad day. All I can say is that over the long haul (3 months now) they are getting better. That keeps me from going back to the doctor. Medicare declined to pay for any of it, so I can't afford to anyway. Maybe this is just going to take a long time for Dot.

About Me

John Sealander received a Bachelor of Architecture and a BA in Art from
The University of Arkansas. His rich and diverse experience includes
working as an architectural designer for Fred Bassetti in Seattle,
producing documentary films for PBS, shooting commercial photography
for True Redd’s “Great Shooting Gallery” in Dallas and teaching writing
courses at SMU’s Academy of Visual Communication. For over 35 years,
John has developed memorable and award winning ads and images for some
of the world’s leading ad agencies and most popular brands. In 1990 he
started Sealander & Company, the Dallas, Texas based production
company and multi-media agency where he continues to develop his ideas
today.